In this video the vCenter Server AutoLab VM is built using the AutoLab automation and the ESXi hosts are added to vCenter inventory. Networking and storage is also configured on the ESXi hosts using AutoLab automation.

A quick note: The administrator@vsphere.local SSO user password is missing from the AutoLab documentation. The password for administrator@vsphere.local is VMware1.lab and you will need this to log in to the AutoLab environment for the first time to add LAB\Administrators to the vCenter permissions so you can log in to the environment as LAB\vi-admin. Once LAB\Administrators has been added with the Administrators role you will be able to log into the lab as LAB\vi-admin.

After the vCenter build is complete the AutoLab environment is pretty much ready for you to start working in the lab to practice for the VMware certification, VCP or VCAP-DCA, exams.

vHersey

Hersey Cartwright is an IT professional with extensive experience designing, implementing, managing, and supporting technologies that improve business processes. Hersey is Solutions Architect for HPE SimpliVity covering Virginia, Washington DC, and Maryland. He holds the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX-DV #128) certification. Hersey actively participates in the VMware community and was awarded the VMware vExpert title in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012. He enjoys working with, teaching, and writing about virtualization and other data center technologies. Follow Hersey on Twitter @herseyc

13 thoughts on “AutoLab Video Series Part 4 – vCenter Build”

Ahh! Thank you Hersey!!! I thought I was going crazy looking through the documentation and not locating the administrator@vsphere.local SSO user password. ‘Small’ omission in the Autolab documentation, haha.

After installation finished I read build log the and update manager is not running, I wonder what is the problem..

Previously I tried to login first to Host1, Host2, and Host3 by using these credentials: username: root, password: VMware1! before while VC is still not setup and poweroff.. Hope that login first time with those 3 host will not affect the the Vcenter installation..

*use the following credentials: username: administrator@vsphere.local, password: VMware1.lab to login for the first time in Vsphere Web Client. Under the Administration, I clicked the Configuration and Add a new Identity source which is the lab.local domain. (cause on my part, Lab.local domain didn’t showed up on the the permissions)
*Selected the Vcenter Permissions and add Lab\Domain Admins.
*go to DC (192.168.199.4) and click the Upgrade shortcut on the desktop (this will recreate empty database).
*Rebuild VC from the start by rebooting it and selecting the CD/DVD iso image (WIndows Server 2008 R2). Then reinstallation will occur.
*After that it successfully installed the VUM.

The bottomline is, it didn’t install the VUM because it failed to add the Lab.local domain in VC permissions during the Vcenter build. I manually add it through the VMware Web Client and not on VMware Vsphere Client.

Thank you for your hard work, Hersey. You made it seems easy. I just follow the steps and I have a lab in a short time.
First time log onto vCenter you need the following info:
userid: administrator@vsphere.local
password: VMware1.lab

First, thank you for taking the time to do Autolab and the videos. Such a wonderful timesaver.

Everything was going great, but I ran into an issue when it was adding the Hosts to vcenter. When it was adding the datastores, I got a lot of errors, and consquently, they were not added. I am also getting some errors realted to HA not being able to communicate.

It looks like these are both realted to the 172.17.199.x and 172.16.199.x networks. I connected to the NAS and I see the ISCSI stuff is setup. I tried to ping out of the NAS to the HOSTS and got nothing.

I am running this on VMware Workstation 10.0.1 on OpenSuse. I saw a bunch of stuff needed to be done for Fusion and I am wondering if I need to do somethign simliar.

Or

I also got errors when the hosts were installing about not being able to put the NIC’s into Promiscuous mode. Could this be causing a problem as well? (multiple networks on same vmnet?)

Again, thanks for taking the time. Loved the videos, followed them step by step.

Hi Hersey
I am following your labs n website and its really great. thanks for all the efforts in building this.
I am stuck at setting up vcenter as part of lab building, trying to set up VC 5.1 version and it won’t install vCenter 5.1, is there something wrong why its not installing vCenter 5.1. set it to install 51 in the automate.ini file in the build share and its still not working.

I found a fix that works for my vSphere 6.0 Autolab build
These labs are great. I’m really appreciative for the work that has gone into these and I’m hoping to get quite a bit of use out of the labs. However, while trying to setup Autolab 2.6 to run vSphere 6.0, I’ve run into the same error reported by many others here:
VMware vSphere Update Manager ; Error 25085.Setup failed to register VMware vSphere Update Manager extension to VMware vCenter Server: vc.lab.local
I tried numerous fixes reported here and on other sites with no luck. Then I realized that this lab worked when built and was probably built using the original vSphere 6.0.0 files. So, I cleared and rebuild my lab using the original files (as closely as I could find) and it worked. No errors or issues.

I strongly suggest that whether you are building vSphere 5.0, 5.5 or 6.0 labs, you stick to the original version of the ISO and exe files as you can find.